In a medium where chance-taking is rare enough but exceeding one's reach is virtually unheard of, you have to admire the spectacular, co-joined vision of David Milch and HBO, as they try not only to resurrect a tired old genre like the Western but also invigorate it with a garrulous streak of blue that might burst the fretful head of every sitting member of the Federal Communications Commission.

"Deadwood," from the man who put the grit and bile and Mamet-ness into "NYPD Blue," is a Western that beats you about the head with obscenities in an effort to establish the tone of an outlaw settlement in 1876 -- where there was no authority and gold was in the streams, liquor in the heads and pistols in the hands of all the black hats who staked a claim there. "Deadwood," as you learn in the first few minutes, never met a man or woman afraid to put a swear word between ordinary English ones.

But the language of "Deadwood" isn't so troubling in principle. It's the fact that it demands to be written about, needs to be addressed and, one would guess, blown into a controversy, simply by being so ever-present. Profanity becomes a character in "Deadwood." And like a lot of flashy supporting roles, it has stolen the thunder of the main actors, the entire series, really, at least for a few weeks. By the third episode -- and by all means, hang around for it -- all we adults will be inured to the sound of Robin Weigert, as Calamity Jane, setting an unbreakable record for the amount of times a woman on television has said "c -- ."

It's a lot. No, really, a lot.

HBO cut Milch enormous slack on this issue, and undoubtedly there will be some clever type who believes that Milch is just furthering on pay cable what he started on network television when "NYPD Blue" busted through language and, later, visual barriers. And honestly, even if profanity doesn't offend you, even if you bathe yourself in it regularly, you're still going to be stunned by the use of it in "Deadwood."

Milch researched the real Deadwood for a year, using the Library of Congress, the Museum of Living Memory and a lot of historical documents from the time that indicate that yes, bad words took on a life of their own in Deadwood. Creatively, Milch is using language to set mood. In the Black Hills of South Dakota, the United States has deeded land to the Sioux Nation. But word of plentiful gold has sent settlers there, creating a war of sorts. It quickly becomes an outlaw settlement. No marshal. No government protection. And loads of unsavory American opportunists.

Milch sets the series in July 1876, two weeks after the Sioux have slaughtered Gen. Custer at Little Big Horn and Deadwood officially becomes a no-man's-land.

Now, to back up just a second here -- a Western? Why even marry one of television's finest writers to television's gold-standard channel when the task at hand -- reimagining a genre hell-bent on staying played out -- seems so daunting? Couldn't they have made a really great cop show?

Well, yes. But HBO already has the country's best cop show in "The Wire." And the channel likes to take chances (a drama about undertakers, a comedy about the most unlikable man alive), so maybe the allure of pulling off the impossible was too hard to resist.

In many ways, "Deadwood" succeeds on a grand, if troubled, scale. It's a wonderful series that gets better every hour you watch it. The first four episodes leave an indelible print on any psyche numbed by network blandness. And part of the appreciation, no question about it, is that Milch and HBO successfully raise a beaten-to-death horse. Before your eyes -- and against your probable predictions after the first hour -- it gets up, staggers and starts to trot. At the end of the fourth episode, you're into a gallop, and fans of the Western -- really die-hard fans, and anyone else who loves a good idea well executed -- will start to cheer for more.

But there's the catch. "Deadwood" is a slow starter. It's one thing for "The Sopranos" to roll out slowly, because you know what to expect. It's quite another for a freshman series with few name stars and a bodacious appetite for incessant swearing to take its sweet time setting up a stake. Then again, if you're paying for HBO, you might as well watch it. Plus, "Deadwood" follows "The Sopranos," so it's not as if you have to leave the couch. And then there's that little matter of HBO having a fairly phenomenal track record, so maybe a little trust on your part will pay off.

And it does. "Deadwood" stars Timothy Olyphant as Seth Bullock (based on a real character, as are many who people this series), a former marshal who gives up the law and heads to Deadwood with his partner, Sol Star (John Hawkes), to set up a general supply store. They have dreams of capitalistic expansion, riding the greed of gold farmers down a more proven path to riches.

In Deadwood, he finds Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) who owns the Gem Saloon and brothel, and who acts as the landlord for most of the vacant parcels left in Deadwood. He is, in the parlance of the series, a real bastard. Brutal, cunning, controlling. If you want to do anything in Deadwood, you go through him. He's got a phalanx of brutes he uses to keep everyone in line and Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif) to mop up the wounded and keep his prostitutes healthy.

Also blowing into town is legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine, in a role that starts sticking to your ribs, a real star turn). He's fading a bit but still rapturously respected, especially by Calamity Jane.

Bullock, Swearengen and Hickok form the nexus of dramatic tension, but things heat up when a rival, slicker saloon owner Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) finagles his way into opening up shop directly across from Swearengen.

In "Deadwood," you know the blood is going to flow. No laws, lots of guns, no restraint on the liquor and drugs -- and greed, the main draw of Deadwood, fueling everything.

But there's a surprising lack of action in "Deadwood." Perhaps we as viewers have become too used to our modern crime and punishment shows, where guns are going off at regular intervals. More happens in 10 minutes on "The Shield" than in 58 on "Deadwood."

And yes, there are lots of characters to suss out. As in any TV pilot, there are people and motives that have to be established, and in the sepia tones of "Deadwood," amid the free-flowing profanity, it's easy to lose track of who's calling whom a f -- so-and-so.

But patience is rewarded. Milch is a great storyteller, and the famous Walter Hill directs here (among a rotating cast of truly great TV directors pulled from HBO's ranks). Hill also directed Jeff Bridges as Hickok in the 1995 movie "Wild Bill."

Milch and Hill set the look and feel authentically, so they probably shouldn't be faulted for taking a couple of episodes to do it.

Others who people "Deadwood" are Alma Garrett (Molly Parker), who is wed to a high-society New York fancy pants way out of his league in Deadwood and headed, maybe a little too clearly, into peril; and others who ably re-create Western characters blown into our memories over time -- dangerous prostitutes, loveable drunks, sane bartenders, trigger-happy opportunists.

And yet the trouble with "Deadwood" is the trouble with most Westerns -- the archetypes have become caricatures, people we don't necessarily believe in because they exist only at amusement parks and in hokey local parades. Getting past that and accepting them as we would doctors and lawyers and cops and private investigators is the hurdle that "Deadwood" faces.

Although the show doesn't necessarily pull off that task in the first hour or even two -- and how could it, really? -- the third and fourth episodes begin to pan out like the gold streams of promise in Deadwood.

But there are other major hurdles. This is not a show for the politically correct. Milch, never a fan of PC, is a pure realism guy. Regarding Indians, Chinese, women -- the Old West wasn't exactly a beacon of enlightenment. Oddly enough -- and four episodes have done nothing to dissuade this growing suspicion -- it appears that Seth Bullock and his partner, Sol Star, are gay. Now, this may be disproved in some brutal cheap-hooker moment in episode five, but until then, anyone with a finely tuned gaydar will pick up on it. (If this Seth and Sol thing isn't true, Milch has got himself a "Lord of the Rings" really-friendly-Hobbits situation he just isn't aware of.)

There are a number of truly fantastic performances here, namely those of Olyphant, McShane and Carradine.

And once you get past the language, you can begin to see other, more nuanced performances (Dourif and Hawkes in particular).

There is a lot to root for in "Deadwood." First and foremost -- it's a Western. Come on, there's an American legacy there, from John Ford to Clint Eastwood, that pulls at us all, deep inside. Milch has done his homework and produced a kind of thesis about the West that supports his notion of making these characters seem as if they grew up on the mean streets of New York. He has the perfect premise -- cowboys and Indians in a lawless state, brewing up some dangerous, dirty capitalism. He has the plot arcs, the actors, the venue (HBO) and the talent.

He doesn't, however, have our patience. That will be tested Sunday and in coming weeks. In a twist of programming fate, "The Sopranos" may not be the best of lead-ins. That's an emotionally draining, violent show. When it's done, sometimes you need to take a break, to let it soak in. There might be some resistance to Calamity Jane breaking records with what sounds like the show's favorite swear word. There might be a tinge of reluctance on the part of women to buy into "Deadwood," which is drowning in squinty-eyed testosterone. And there's that whole other thing, too -- that Westerns are dead for a reason.

And yet, what Milch and HBO are trying to do here is impressive in its audacity. You can't help but want "Deadwood" to succeed. If you can manage some patience and believe in the merits of a nearly forgotten genre still filled with dramatic potential, then it's got a gunfighter's chance.